Google Classroom Guardians allows teachers to invite parents or guardians to receive email summaries about their student’s progress in class. These summaries include information about missing and upcoming work, as well as announcements and other class activity.
Key Points for Teachers:
Enables communication: Guardians stay informed about their student’s work without needing direct access to Classroom.
Easy to set up: Teachers can invite guardians directly from their Classroom, and guardians simply accept the invitation via email.
Privacy focused: Summaries don’t include grades, and guardians can’t view students’ actual work.
Customisable: Teachers can choose whether to send daily or weekly summaries.
Promotes engagement: By keeping guardians in the loop, it can encourage more involvement in their student’s learning.
Overall, the Guardians feature is a useful tool for teachers to foster communication and collaboration with parents or guardians.
Put simply, KAMIis an online PDF annotation, markup and editor tool. You can highlight, underline, and strikethrough text in PDF and other document formats. You can also add text boxes, shapes, and images.
Kami also works with Google Drive and Google Classroom. With Kami, you can easily collaborate on documents in the classroom while avoiding the hassles of printing documents.
The feature we love the most is the ability to mark your whole class work in one go with the Classroom integration.
Edpuzzle allows you to build a video bank from a number of places across the internet which you can then share with your class.
Edpuzzle also allows you to track who in your class has actually viewed the video. Perfect for Flipped Learning, you could assign the video for the students to watch before or after class then check to see if the students are viewing the material or not.
The Chrome extension adds a small button on to the page of a YouTube video when you watch one, when you click it you can then add it to your Class and add your own voice over, interactive questions or annotations if you want students to really focus on a certain section or idea.
The best part? It’s free for educators! Like the sound of all this? Check out Edpuzzle user Ms Oudiz uses it to improve her students essay writing skills as well as checking out the Edpuzzle blog posts where some of the posts are written by education experts as guest writers.
A Core Tool During the Coronavirus Closures Discover how to use Edpuzzle for remote learning with these top tips from Adam Hill, an edtech expert whose school has been closed due to the coronavirus.
5 Ways to Reach Introverted Students Reach introverted students with technology and discover these useful tips to help make your classroom as inclusive as possible!
Screencastify is the #1 screen recorder for Google Chrome. Capture, edit and share videos in seconds.
Screencastify is a Google Chrome extension that is available from the Chrome web store. It enables you to create screencasts and videos on a Windows, Mac, or Chromebook. In addition to recording your screen, it combines annotation tools, record from your microphone for voice over, and you can record yourself with a picture-in-picture overlay of your webcam. Everything you record is saved to Google Drive so you can easily share the video with students, embed it on a Google Site, or upload to YouTube.
You can use Screencastify to create recorded lessons, tutorials, or giving feedback. It is often quicker and easier to convey how to do something in a video, rather than writing a long list of steps. To see an example of Screencastify in action view my video below.
Mote lets you record a quick comment in Google Docs. It’s tagline is; the faster, friendlier way to comment on docs.
The mote Chrome extension makes it easy to add voice note feedback for students within Google Docs, Google Classroom, Slides and Sheets. You can quickly add a comment in simple terms without having to worry about how it may come across in the written word.
mote’s mission is to make document collaboration faster, friendlier and more powerful.
Get Revising is filled with smart revision tools and tips to help boost your grades. As part of The Student Room, you can be sure it’s got a good team behind it and a trusted name.
It’s filled with past papers and quick quizzes to help you learn more about whatever subject you need, all in all there are over 300,000 different learning resources with 192,564 resources just for A Level subjects (At the time of writing). Just over 140,000 of those resources are for GCSE subjects so if you’re retaking any of your GCSE subjects or want to help your friend or family member taking theirs, there’s enough resources to help everyone.
You can even search by exam board to make sure the information you use is relevant to your exact subject and exam.
It’s free for everyone, and teachers are regularly adding more and more quizzes and mindmaps all the time. Just a quick example, there are over 1,000 Spanish resources, 6,000 Law resources, and over 20,000 Biology resources.
If you want to be confident in the information you’re looking at, each resource has a rating system and some have Teacher Recommendations. Take a look at the example below, Art in Roman Britain has a 5 star rating meaning it is useful for A Level Classical Civilization, it also has a Teacher Recommendation which means a teacher has looked through the resource and found that it is of high quality.
A great feature of Get Revising is their revision resource creation tool! These tools have been designed to make it easy for you to create something to test your knowledge, re-use it so you learn it best and share with others to help them too. Just look at all the tools available to you below:
WeVideo is a cloud-based video editor that enables you create pro like videos on any device, including Chromebook, Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Cloud-based storage means there is no software to download and install, with the added flexibility of accessing your projects on any device. Get advanced with features like green screen to take your videos to the next level. Once you’ve finished your video, export in multiple formats and save directly to your Google Drive.
Sign-up
Sign-up and sign-in to WeVideo using your college Google account. This will make it easy to sign-in across all your devices and save your projects on Google Drive.
Let’s get started
To get started, select the type of project you’d like to create:
Video – Start a new video project;
Recording – Record your screen and webcam;
GIF – Create an animated GIF to embed in a presentation, website, or share on social media.
Import media
You can upload video and images directly from your device or add media stored on your Google Drive. After adding your media, simply drag it onto the timeline. WeVideo also includes a huge library of stock media footage.
Add transitions
To add a new transitions, click on the Transitions tab and drag the transition onto the timeline. Preview each transition by hovering your mouse over it and clicking Play.
Add audio
Add music and sound effects to your video. Browse the audio available in WeVideo or upload your own.
Add animated text
Use text for a title screen, credits, or label elements in your video project. Go to the text tab and then drag the text element onto the timeline. Afterwards, double click the text on the timeline to edit it.
Export and share your video
Exporting your video to share with the world is quick and easy. Press the finish button, name your project, select the appropriate resolution and press export. You can even ask WeVideo to save the export straight to your Google Drive.
WeVideo Academy
To learn more about WeVideo and discover how to creatively use video creation projects in the classroom go and explore the training available at the WeVideo Acadmey.
At Barton Peveril, we use a variety of technologies to make courses more engaging and improve access to learning for students. Online learning technologies like Google Classroom have brought exciting opportunities to reconsider how we teach, engage with or involve learners in different ways.
In this guide, we will look at some of the online learning technologies we have available that can be taken advantage of for distance learning in the event of a college closure due to Covid-19.
Live Online Lessons
Google Hangouts Meet is Google’s video conferencing tool that enables you to talk face to face with learners and engage with your class remotely. All your students need is Wi-Fi access and a device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet.
Lesson content can be shared in a live video stream with groups ranging from a few people up to hundreds. Hangouts Meet includes the ability to share your screen, ideal for displaying a presentation or other content with the class.
Google has recently made it possible to record a lesson hosted in Hangouts Meet as a video in your Google Drive. All lessons must be recorded, and if you wish these recordings can be shared in Google Classroom afterwards for students who couldn’t make it.
To improve the remote learning experience for teachers and students using Hangouts Meet, Google have made several improvements:
Only meeting creators can mute or remote other participants in a meeting;
Students cannot start/stop a meeting being recorded.
Google Classroom is a well-established online learning tool at Barton Peveril that you can use to keep students engaged while they’re at home. For instance, start a virtual class discussion to explore lesson content and talk about what they’re learning. You can also give students feedback about their work in Classroom when marking an assignment.
Tracking student understanding and progress can be achieved through combining Classroom with Google Forms. Quizzes in Forms offer automatic marking and enable you to embed content such as images and videos. When you share a Google Forms quiz using Classroom, you can easily assign it as an automatically marked assignment.
Screencastify allows you to record your screen, perfect for creating recorded lessons for a flipped classroom or distance learning. It is available as an extension in Google Chrome that can be used from a Chromebook, PC, or Mac. In addition to recording your screen, it combines annotation tools, adds a voice over with your microphone, while also including a picture-in-picture overlay of your webcam. Everything you record is saved to Google Drive so you can easily share the video with students in Google Classroom.
Screencastify is giving educators a premium upgrade to increase from the 5 minute limit in the free version. Go to account.screencastify.com/user/subscribe and use “redeem coupon” with the code CAST_COVID.
Flat IO – Write your music scores online with the easiest tool for creating sheet music together.
User friendly online music notation software that gives you all the tools that you need to make your own sheet music. You can write, listen, share and discover music scores right in your web browser on any device.
Invite your friends to compose your music scores online collaboratively. A single musical composition can be opened and edited in real time by multiple people using different devices at the same time.
Your music notation editor online in your web browser
Real-time collaboration and offline edition if you lose your internet connection
Compose with your MIDI devices: plug your device and play!
MusicXML, MIDI, PDF and Audio (MP3 and WAV) compatibility
Read and write music notation and guitar tablatures, together
Smart History: Browse all the modifications you made, note after note
Collaborate with video within Google Hangouts
Percussion instruments and notation to create amazing drum scores
Online digital and visual metronome to help you to practice easily
For teachers there is an Education version available. Flat for Education is designed for your music classroom. You can use it on any device to access and create your musical compositions or music education activities. Flat has a unique collaborative experience: let your students work in real-time on the same sheet music, whether you are in the classroom or working from home. It can also integrate with Google Classroom to make it easier with your classes.
Examples
You can see all the most popular creations on Flat.IO on their ‘Popular‘ page. We’ve added a few examples below:
Lil Nas X – Old Town Road made on Flat.IO using a Classical Guitar, Horn in C, Clarinet, Grand Piano and a Tuba.
TheGhostbusters Theme Song with a Grand Piano and a Drumset.
Soundtrap let’s you record instruments, vocals and use loops to make music anywhere.
Soundtrap for Education is a cloud-based platform that enables students to create music or podcasts. With Soundtrap, students can collaborate on projects using an extensive collection of quality loops, effects, and software instruments from anywhere in the world pretty much on any device. It also integrates with Google Classroom for effortless collaboration.
It’s worth noting that Students can’t sign up for this without a teacher already signing up beforehand. There is a free trial available for teachers and after that there is reduced pricing available for education.
For example, start a new song using all the built in professional loops and software instruments on your tablet when on the bus, continue on your Chromebook when arriving at home, invite a couple of friends, who are working on Mac and Windows devices, and conduct a video chat from within the studio coming up with the bass line for the song and finally find a didgeridoo player in the Soundtrap community laying down a unique ending of the song; you are all working in the same project seeing and hearing all the changes. It’s like Google Docs, but for music production!
See how teachers are using Soundtrap across subjects:
